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| Must Have Faith! |
What is it to sacrifice one's own children? I suppose the ultimate sacrifice to God; what kind of God I'm not too sure!
Anyway getting on with it! There are two stories here; one, of the sacrifice of Phrixos and Helle, and the other of the sacrifice of Isaac.
In the Greek account King Athamas, thinking it was under Gods order was set to kill his two children, Phrixos and Helle. "The oracle said, kill Phrixos and Helle at the altar for a sacrifice, or your corn will grow no more". This was very hard for the king but he believed he must obey what he believed to be a God's wish. At the altar, knife in hand at the moment of sacrifice, a golden ram was sent from the God's to rescue them.
In the biblical account Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his only son Isaac; Abraham who did not want to go against the word of god set about to do so. He took his son atop a mountain, he built an altar and with knife to throat an angel of God came down to spare Isaac. Abraham happy with this also found a ram stuck in a bush and sacrificed that in Isaac's place.
So in both accounts we have a father, against his will, set to sacrifice his child/children by the word of God. We have the children at the altar under knife, and at the last moment saved by divine intervention and also, but under different pretences a ram.
Intriguing parallels again but some differences to acknowledge would be that King Athamas was deceived by his new wife Ino (after she secretly burned his crops), into believing the oracle of Delphi had instructed him to sacrifice his children (Ino's step-children) or otherwise his crops would never grow. So it was not as in the biblical account, a test from God; it was more the deception of man. And it was Phrixos’ and Helle’s birth mother who had the golden ram sent to save the children; so it was not so much God’s love, but the love of a mother that is perhaps shown. The golden ram was sacrificed at the end of its journey to Zeus, which may be worthy to note as well. There are a compelling amount of coincidental similarities in these stories, as you have noted, it may be interesting to investigate why…
ReplyDeleteI like where your going professor! Where do all these things go back to? The fire certainly will harp your efforts in finding literature, Sorry! But who's older than the Greeks and the Hebrews...
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